Cities Pursuing Olympics Need a Story to Tell

Along with plans for impressive sports facilities and the outline of a sound financial package, recent history makes clear that what it really takes to win the Olympic Games is elegantly simple: You need a story. A truly compelling story.

Beijing won the 2008 Games with this story: The Games have never been held in China. China is home to 20% of the human race. It’s time.

Athens won the 2004 Games like this: Greece is the birthplace of the Olympic movement. Come home.

Now the U.S. Olympic Committee must decide: New York, San Francisco, Washington or Houston--which of these four has the best story to tell in hopes of winning the 2012 Summer Games?

Over the past few weekends, a USOC task force toured each of the cities. Wrapping up the tour Monday in San Francisco, it saw highways, byways, railways, ferries, stadiums, plans for stadiums. All of which matters, according to Charles H. Moore, who heads the task force.

But what really matters is which city has a story to tell that could reach voters in the European-dominated International Olympic Committee. Moore said: “We really want the Olympic Games to come to the United States in 2012--and if not then, in 2016. So we’ve got to pick the bid that’s going to be the right destination, the city that has the right elements to attract the most IOC votes. It’s that simple.”

For proof, consider the 2008 election. An IOC task force had ranked Beijing, Paris and Toronto equally capable of staging the Games--in Olympic jargon, equal on “technical merit.” Beijing, with its attention-grabbing story, won in a rout.

Last fall, in the first act of the 2012 campaign, the USOC task force eliminated Los Angeles and three other candidates. In September, the task force will prune the four remaining cities to two. In November, the USOC’s 115-member board of directors will pick one. In 2005, the IOC will choose the 2012 site.

A number of cities worldwide have expressed interest in the 2012 Games. Among them: Paris, Rome, Madrid, Toronto, Rio de Janeiro, Havana. Even Tel Aviv (where the slogan, unveiled earlier this month, is, “Tel Aviv, you’re allowed to dream”).

The 2012 situation is complicated by the contest for the 2010 Winter Games. Vancouver, Canada, and Salzburg, Austria, are considered the leading candidates for 2010. The IOC will choose the 2010 site next July; most Olympic experts believe a Vancouver win could dim U.S. chances in 2012.

The Washington Post, citing an unnamed source, reported Wednesday that Washington and San Francisco appear most likely to survive the September cut. A “complete work of fiction and imagination,” USOC spokesman Mike Moran said in response.

San Francisco clearly holds international cachet. But it faces a major hurdle: USOC uncertainty over a financial guarantee required of all candidates. Such uncertainty played a role in the USOC decision to eliminate Los Angeles.

The USOC demands a firm guarantee by state or local authorities in case of unforeseen financial liabilities. In March, Gov. Gray Davis signed a measure creating an Olympic-designated state trust fund; it has no money in it and probably never will. That left the USOC with more questions than answers; San Francisco now has only weeks to generate a solution, if one can be found.

Washington’s bid centers on a renovated waterfront and a central Olympic park in the area around RFK Stadium.

That, though, was precisely Toronto’s pitch for 2008--concentrated venues along a renovated waterfront. Toronto was trounced.

Washington also stands alone as the symbol of all that others elsewhere love to resent about the U.S., particularly within the IOC, which for years has sheltered strong anti-U.S. sentiments.

In the midst of the Salt Lake corruption scandal, only one nation’s parliament summoned then-IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch for an explanation: The U.S. Congress.

Ultimately, the Salt Lake Games proved successful. But some influential IOC members are still smarting over slights that took place during the Games--slights that would reflect only on Washington.

In opening the Salt Lake Games, for instance, President Bush declared: “On behalf of a proud, determined and grateful nation, I declare open the Games of Salt Lake City, celebrating the Winter Olympic Games.” He departed from the traditional Olympic declaration by offering a patriotic preface and by delivering the one-sentence address surrounded by the U.S. team.

“Even Hitler didn’t depart from protocol,” one IOC member said recently, a reference to the opening ceremony of the 1936 Summer Games in Berlin.

Houston has a much different image problem with which to contend. Inevitably, it is compared in IOC circles--however unfairly--to Atlanta, on the grounds that both are featureless, hot, muggy Southern cities. Within the IOC, the Atlanta Olympics are typically remembered for transport woes, technology problems and a murderous bomb explosion.

“We are the fourth-largest city in the country,” Houston 2012 bid President Susan Bandy said. “Comparatively speaking, we are so much further along, however you look at it, than Atlanta ever will be.”

Virtually all the venues needed for an Olympics are already in place in Houston, and the pitch there is for an indoor, air-conditioned Games. “We love it when they underestimate us, and we come through,” Bandy said.

No one ought to underestimate New York. The Games have never been held in the nation’s largest city. And is there a more compelling story than the New York story, especially now?

Bid leaders had sought before last Sept. 11 to portray New York as the world’s gathering place. “The city is an Olympic Village every day,” Dan Doctoroff, New York 2012’s bid chief, has often said. Now an element of any New York bid has to acknowledge the terror attacks, and that the Games could help accelerate rebuilding in Manhattan.

Just days after the World Trade Center towers fell, the mayor of Rome suggested that all other potential 2012 candidates bow out in favor of New York if it became the U.S. choice. IOC President Jacques Rogge called the gesture premature. Now the USOC is set to trim the field to two on or around Sept. 11 of this year; the timing strongly suggests that New York will be kept in the mix.

The New York bid committee plans to spend about $900 million on Olympic facilities. In addition, the city, state and private developers have plans to spend about $4.5 billion on projects that would enhance an Olympic effort but are likely to be built in any event.

New York would need an Olympic stadium that would be built on the west side of Manhattan and an Olympic Village to be built across town, near U.N. headquarters.

High construction costs alone, however, are not a bid-killer. Chinese officials said before they won that they would spend $14 billion preparing for 2008; their estimate is up to $30 billion, and the IOC is eagerly looking forward to the Beijing Olympics.

Already underway in Manhattan is a city- and state-backed $50-million project to tackle the design, engineering and zoning issues needed to bring the No. 7 subway to the far west side, where a stadium would be built.

The plan is to have construction begin by early 2005--just before the IOC vote.

And who was recently announced as chairman of the New York 2012 management committee? Harvey Schiller, a former USOC executive director and 1994 recipient of the Olympic Order, the IOC’s highest honor.

Now that is how the IOC game is played.

In Olympic politicking, New York bid leader Doctoroff said, “The United States has to overcome an inherent deficit.” But in New York, he said, “We have a fabulous story.”